Asexual Romance

by jerrontables

Carl and John sat at the edge of the reaching sea. The water was clearer here than the gulf John had been used to. He was Texas, and Texas was once a year–if you’re lucky–to the Padre where even Spring Break couldn’t tup the muck, what with all the beer and butt (college girl sethut hut!).

“How can you look up to the stars and ask for Joanie to love you when you don’t know the correlation–the why–the Joanie, the stars and purpose, and what keeps each going?”

“I don’t know, I guess it’s–”

“No, why don’t you ask the stars if they care? Why don’t you ask anyone if they care?”

“Who cares if they don’t?”

“Someone. And it ain’t you and it ain’t me, and there’s your answer right there.”

“Whose answer?”

“And for all I care, Joanie can float right out to sea. Right out there to that sea.”

Carl was silent. Drank. Silent. Spoke–“fair enough.”

“Fair enough. And you’re right it’s fair enough. Because we sit and eat it and it’s always fair enough.”

“Eat what?”

“And let me tell you. It’s all cakes and pastry pies that bake in our oven, Carl. You try eating that for eighty years. Try to make the stars give a damn when you’re at your table. With your pee-can pie.”

John stood up from his lawn chair and “Uuhhff!” stomped his foot at the coming ocean, tasted the salt that splashed his lips. He wiped his glasses and sat back down. The air itself was salty, heavy with something peaked over the horizon but never shown, day or night–burning with the sun and cloaking its figure in that indistinguishable line that hints the world when lights are out and all is calm. “Right out to sea, Carl! And that’s one big, wave-bobbin’–oh wait for it…”–his arms waving–“wait for iiiiit…blip.”

“So you don’t like Joanie?”

“No,” John said, “I do like Joanie, but that’s something totally different.”